Tag Archives: Business

Some say the rise of the cloud and BYOD will spell the downfall of the CIO. But could these developments in fact strengthen the CIO’s hand? My latest feature for Tech Republic investigates:

Technology is increasingly being purchased and consumed by the business rather than by the IT department. It’s a trend that has led a number of experts to believe that the CIO will struggle to survive. They see the only answer for IT leaders is to take an operational view and to become more involved in line-of-business activities.

But isn’t it inherently naive to suggest that the CIO role is on the way out? Who will manage remaining enterprise IT assets and who will provide a strategic take on the technology and applications of the digital era? We ask five IT experts for their views on the future role of the CIO.

With more than a decade of IT and finance leadership experience at Carphone Warehouse, Matt Peers is now CIO of consultant Deloitte. And he is adamant that the suggestion that the CIO’s career could soon be over is flawed.

“Never has the role of CIO been more pervasive,” says Peers. “There’s nothing in business now that does not involve IT. But that central role is not about bits and bytes. People have talked for ages about being customer-friendly – and IT is now finally about enabling people to serve customers.”

The pressure on CIOs to make telling business improvements quickly is increasing – I recently presented five ways for IT leaders to make a mark in an article for TechRepublic:

What once took years now takes weeks. The fast-pace of technological development, supported by on-demand computing and the consumerisation of IT, means enterprise technology can now be adopted and used more quickly than ever before. So, how long do CIOs need to make their mark on an organisation?

IT strategy cycles traditionally run somewhere between three and five years. That schedule is consistent with tenures in the IT C-suite, with analyst Gartner reporting that the average time a CIO spends in post is four years and four months.

However, contract lengths vary considerably between sectors and nations. The Government Accountability Office, for example, reports the average tenure of government sector CIOs in the US is as low as two years. TechRepublic spoke to IT experts and got five top tips for how CIOs can act strategically in a digital age.

Are you ready for the digital future and the ever-continuing flux that will constitute the role of the modern IT leader?

More than anything else, CIO Connect’s 2012 Horizons research of more than 200 technology executives shows the target for high-quality IT leaders in the digital age is getting broader and wider. As the executive responsible for technology, the CIO looking to take advantage of the leadership opportunity must embrace transformation for the benefit of the business.

IT leaders are used to change; in short, they have to be. The mechanics – the basic building blocks of the IT industry – change and flex almost continuously with time. Today’s fundamental business technology has always been tomorrow’s potential legacy system.

But decades of enterprise IT implementations mean constrictions associated with legacy technology have become an issue common to all businesses, regardless of sector or specialism. And the modern pace of change in the digital age could, from the point of view of the sceptic, serve to create more complexity.

CIOs who managed what seemed like the fast-paced transformation associated with distributed computing and electronic commerce, now find themselves confronted with lightning speed change. The confluence of mobile, consumer, cloud and social technologies means the defensible enterprise perimeter has become a nebulous concept.

Our Horizons research shows CIOs recognise employees now demand a free choice of mobile device, and use such tools to draw on enterprise information on-demand. Building a firewall and locking down access is no longer an option because technology, and the knowledge it enables, is being democratised.

Yet the pace of change is no reason to be scared. Savvy CIOs are embracing consumerisation and showing the business how technology can help engage with customers whose opinions were previously hidden. It is the CIO, rather than the marketing director or another c-level strategist, who must grasp the nettle and demonstrate how going digital improves the business.

Responding CIOs also recognise that the cloud, although in its infancy, could help the business to really use IT flexibly and to create an approach to technology that concentrates on value-added outcomes, rather than being constrained by the fears of legacy infrastructures.

Now is your opportunity to finally address the embedded perceptions of the IT department, where the technology team is viewed as practising a dark art that only acts to reduce the potential for change. Leadership in the digital age means the converse is now true and CIOs must show a business-enabled approach to IT that is agile and light-to-the-touch.

Your first step towards success – whether working as a change leader, digital designer or a shared services executive – is to grab the attention of the chief executive and to work with trusted partners to deliver set objectives that relate to specific business outcomes. Now, more than ever before, is your opportunity to change the business for the better.

The above column summarised CIO Connect’s 2012 Horizons survey and was included in the recently released edition (issue 37) of CIO Connect magazine

Apple products are beautiful to look at and easy to use. But are iPads, iPhones and the technology specialist’s other user-friendly tools really ready for enterprise deployment? Five CIOs gave their opinions to me for silicon.com on whether Apple technology is really resilient enough for the modern organisation:

Opinion 1 – Apple tech best suits certain industries: “Enterprises used to drive innovation and that is now definitely not the case,” says Julian Self, group operations and IT director at information specialist IPD, who says people are now entering the workplace with their own devices and their own demands.

“There’s significant pull-through from consumerisation,” says Self. “If strategies to allow workers to buy their own device continue to increase in number, then we will see much more Apple technology in the office. But is it really enterprise-ready?” Self believes the answer is definitely ‘yes’ for some organisations in specific industries, such as media and marketing.

But while he believes MacBooks have a great reputation, and that iPhones and iPads can be used as channels to create apps that build brand awareness, he is not convinced there will be a rapid move towards a broad range of Apple-led enterprises.

“Our clients don’t really make decisions in the field and, in many businesses, people still need a Windows-led approach,” says Self. “At the same time, attempts by Microsoft to move towards gesture-based computing might have an unexpected effect and show sceptics that other operating systems and techniques, such as those produced by Apple, can work in the business.”

The autumn edition of CIO Connect magazine hit CIO desks during the last week of October. Cover star Dan West, IT director at ASOS.com, talks about his priorities for transformation and innovation at the online retail giant.

The release of the magazine was held back to include a special report that summarises the best practice evidence on consumerisation emerging from CIO Connect’s annual conference in London. As usual, thanks to all participants and contributors:

Dan West, IT director at ASOS.com

Cliff Burroughs, group IT and lean director at United Biscuits

Bill Chang, executive vice president at SingTel

Rajneesh Narula, professor at Henley Business School

Neil Farmer, IT director at Crossrail

Adam Gibson, CIO at Odgers Berndtson

Rob Gibson, director of business systems at the Scottish Qualifications Authority

Boardrooms across the UK have become home to the tablet computer. But is the iPad, and its rival products, really an important business tool or just an executive gadget? Here’s my analysis for silicon.com:

Executives always seem keen to take hold of the latest mobile technology and be part of the consumer revolution. But just how far that enthusiasm translates into serious business use with Apple’s iPad and other tablets is not entirely clear. So silicon.com talked to five IT leaders about the current state of tablet adoption and the likely route of future development.

There’s little doubt that tablets, in particular the iPad, are the subject of incredible fanaticism. You only have to watch the news during an Apple product launch to see the fervour among the company’s legion of devoted fans. But such excitement must be tempered in a business context.

“They’re just a tool and should be treated as such,” says Hampshire County Council CIO Jos Creese, who says technology in the organisation must be judged on its value and effectiveness. He says tablets could help break the tendency of executives to hide behind laptop screens during important meetings. Yet, again, he says real success must relate to business outcomes.

It’s tough to take a place at the executive top table, so knowing which features will make you stand out from your peers as an IT leader is essential. Here’s a presentation of such features by me for silicon.com:

What makes a great CIO? And how can such leaders encourage the best perception of IT across the business, as well as foster the right type of behaviour among the technology team? silicon.com spoke to five IT leaders with five different perspectives.

Put commercial issues first and IT second - Success is not defined by how you interact with the business but how you become part of it, according to Steve Jeffree, operations director and group CIO at the Law Society.

“The future for the CIO who acts in a standalone manner is very limited,” he says, referring to his own additional annexation of the operations director role at the Law Society in March 2009.

Read the media, or speak to any number of so-called industry experts, and you will still hear the same line: the CIO needs to be more aligned with the needs of the business.

Now is the time for the use of such clichés to stop. If a CIO really isn’t engaged with the business, what on earth is the executive responsible for technology doing on a daily basis?

The answer is quite a lot, actually. What becomes clear is that CIOs do not spend hours talking of the need to spend more time with other functions because such connectedness is a given.

The context to this new level of interaction is change. Perceptions of technology within the business have altered rapidly over the past decade or so, shifting from being seen as a dark art that is best left to the geeks in the basement, to an essential backbone of business success that must be widely understood in order to create competitive advantage.

Such perceptions continue to alter on an almost daily basis, with the business forced to confront challenges across multiple technology fronts. These battlegrounds include cloud computing, social media and consumer technology.

But across all fronts, the CIO has to be in charge of one crucial component: information. Now, more than ever before, the executive responsible for business IT truly is the chief information officer.

For far too long, CIOs have been forced to justify the relevance of technology to the business. Brought into board level debates on an ad-hoc basis, IT leaders have then been asked to explain why spending on hardware and software is important.

More fool the business that still takes that closed approach. In comparison to other c-level executives, the CIO is the individual with the broadest view across all business functions. That great view across the enterprise should, in itself, be enough to guarantee the CIO’s regular seat at the top table.

But there is more. CIOs have long recognised what the rest of the business has only just started to comprehend; your success or failure as a modern organisation relies on your ability to understand data.

From structured data stored in stove pipes to unstructured data floating round on social media, successful businesses will be able to take data and create useful information that can help improve decision making and boost customer engagement.

The CIO, as the guardian of this information, is the person who will ensure data becomes useful knowledge that provides a business advantage. Now, then, really is your time.

The summer edition of CIO Connect magazine should now be making its way to the desks of IT leaders. The edition profiles some of the great work being undertaken by CIO Connect’s Hong Kong network, including profile pieces of Jockey Club CIO Sunny Lee and internet guru Vint Cerf.

Other CIOs featured in the magazine include Malcolm Simpkin, UK CIO of general insurance at Aviva, and Jim Slack, business leader of IT operations and development at Co-operative Financial Services. As ever, thanks to all participants and contributors:

Sunny Lee, executive director of IT at the Hong Kong Jockey Club

Vint Cerf, chief internet evangelist at Google

Malcolm Simpkin, UK CIO of general insurance at Aviva

Jim Slack, business leader of IT operations and development at Co-operative Financial Services

Trevor Didcock, CIO at easyJet

Sean Whetstone, head of IT services at Reed

Pat Kolek, chief operating officer at eBay Classifieds Group

Cris Beswick, managing director at Let’s Think Beyond

Rebecca Jacoby, CIO at Cisco

Derek Drury, CIO at University of Salford

Jo Stanford, group IT director at De Vere

Dan Morgan, IT director at General Healthcare Group

Jeff Smith, CIO at Torus Insurance

Glyn Evans, director of business change and ICT chief at Birmingham City Council

The lure of cost savings may be pushing businesses towards the cloud, but who will ultimately balance the financial arguments with the risk factors? Here’s another feature I’ve put together about on-demand computing for silicon.com:

“There are multiple constituents,” suggests Rebecca Jacoby, global CIO at networking giant Cisco. “By nature, a big part of a CIO’s job is risk management and an understanding of specific security concerns. When it comes to the cloud, security is a real risk and the technology isn’t necessarily at the right level for most organisations at the moment.”